Absurdism In Waiting For Godot

The theatre of the absurd is a word coined by the Hungarian critic Martin Esslin to describe the works written during 1950’s and 1960’s.The word ‘absurd’ was first used by French philosopher Albert Camus in his work The Myth Of Sisyphus in which represents the existence of humans as meaningless. Also, Camus believed that since human beings cannot provide a rational explanation for the existence of the universe, hence it can be seen as meaningless, shallow and absurd. Martin Esslin described the theatre of the absurd as a ‘device’ which was used by the writers to display their anxiety, bewilderment and meaninglessness in a world which is not based on reasons known to humans. Hence it showed the confusion in the human mind and heart and a sense …show more content…
The plot of the play is loose and its characters are also just puppets and talk in a very incoherent manner. The character’s presence and their description and the conclusion of the play is purposeless.Beckett has shown absurdity in the life of the people, also he believed that life is in a circular form, it ends at the point it starts from. There’s no religion or moral values in this play (in waiting for Godot) and no sense/concept of space and time in absurdity.Also, the theme of the play is unexplained. There’s no characterization, no motivation and no result in the play. There’s a line in the play which sums up the idea of the play for the …show more content…
like most absurdist plays, it ends at where it started from .At the same time its different from poetic theatre as it does not make use of dream and fantasy poetic language which makes it cent percent absurd. The two characters are aimless and keep passing their time throughout the play which has absolutely no action and their wait is infinite as Godot remains a mystery because he never shows up even when the novel ends. This also questions the existence of God and that if he exists then he is contributing to the chaos by his silence. There’s no pattern in human life and humans are entirely dependent on chance. Also, the play shows how humans, though aware of the consequences of waiting for Godot, try to distract themselves by arguing about worthless things and topics. This is how humans try to remain oblivious to their condition, they try to be cheerful and seek distraction in pointless stupid activities. They have never seen Godot but have only heard about him through a messenger boy who comes at the end of each day and tells them that Godot will not be coming